animal day journal #5

whbeebe


Annie has developed into a fully-fledged traveling Doodle, with all rights due that lofty position. She guards the car when we’re parked, and when traveling provides navigation services. I need to stress, again, that I don’t leave Annie alone in the car. The entire back seat is her special place, and she will move from side to side to look out the windows as the world flows by. On this particular morning Annie and I provided taxi services for mom’s trip to see one of her doctors. As usual we waited outside in the car for mom. When mom came back out I needed to put mom’s rolator into the back of the car. That’s when Annie decided to stand up and yawn out of her middle seat.

Annie is living the absolute best time of her life right now. That’s not to say she wasn’t living well before, but there’s nothing like being the only dog in the family. She gets all the attention. She gets two healthy walks per day when I’m not sick or the weather is good. She goes out into the back yard to watch while I work, then comes back into the house when I come back in. She is a living garden gnome.

She is a sweet little creature.

apple siri is very good, actually

whbeebe

I have grown to like Siri. Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. I’ve been using Siri far more with iOS 18 and my iPhone 16 Pro Max than I ever did with my iPhone 11 Pro Max and up to iOS 17. The differences between Siri on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 11 are stark. Questions I ask of, or commands I give to, Siri on the iPhone 16 are answered quickly and accurately. Siri on the iPhone 11 was slower and prone to messing up, such as the mispronunciation of names in my contacts, or else not understanding me and calling the wrong contact. Siri on the iPhone 11 was always slow. It would take many long seconds to respond, more than likely due to sending data to some remote server and waiting for the response. Siri on my iPhone 11 was not a pleasant experience, such that it wasn’t too long before I turned it off.

Siri’s performance on my iPhone 16 stands in stark contrast to Siri’s performance on my iPhone 11. For one thing, it’s for all practical purposes instantaneous with its responses. No lag, no wait. Maybe the network is better now, but I believe that the processor and memory are such that Siri’s processing is local to my iPhone 16. Furthermore, there are no more mispronunciations of any names. It’s also sophisticated enough that if I ask it to call ‘Bob’, and there are for example two ‘Bobs’ in my contacts, it will immediately ask me which one to call by speaking the first and last names of the entries. I can immediately tell it which one, and it then places the calls. I can ask Siri to answer an incoming call. I can use Siri to vocally sent text messages, or have it read text messages I receive while driving. I consider Siri a safety feature while driving because I don’t have to take my hands off the steering wheel nor my eyes off the road. I can never imagine doing this with Siri on my iPhone 11.

Many will read the prior paragraph and say how simplistic all that is. But simplistic is good, especially if it’s consistently accurate. I don’t want elaborate, I just need help in those mundane tasks that are of importance to me. This is true hands-free driving, and as I noted earlier, a true driving safety feature. I’m interested now more than ever to see how the verbal interface to Siri will allow me to interact with Siri. I’m positively excited at the prospects.